If bees die out, we’ll all feel the sting in the tail

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The first bee of the year. In April — what a ridiculous spring this has been. It was, I think, a buff-tailed bumblebee, a queen, massive, flying with the grace of a Volkswagen, full of last year’s sperm. She was flying from flower to flower, doing what bees do, feeding up on nectar and as she did so, transferring pollen from one flower to the next.

Soon, if all goes well, she will find a nesting site and start to rear the first generation of the year. After that, she will become a full-time egg-producer and carer as the colony grows